Read Stardust Lost: The Triumph, Tragedy, and Meshugas of the Yiddish Theater in America for Free Online Page B

assimilationists who want Jews to discard Yiddish in favor of demotic German, French, and the Slavic tongues.
    Against them are the common people who have no intention of abandoning what they called their
mamaloshen—
mother tongue. A
badkhn
known as Sanye of Bialystok foretells the outcome of this language war by voting with his feet. A nineteenth-century account describes the jester as one who “possessed great gifts of mimicry and comedy. He carried with him a suitcase with false beards, various costumes, even women's costumes, and portrayed every role with mimicry and comic gesture like a true artist.” By the end of the century, however, as the Jews drained out of the Pale, Poland, and Lithuania, seeking the freedom of Western Europe and the New World, life became insupportable for professional comedians. “Once, early in the morning on a summer day I met Sanye coming from a wedding. He complained to me: ‘Brother, things are bad. There is no longer any room for me here.’ Six months later he left for America.”
    Sanye is not alone.

CHAPTER TWO
     

THE FATHER
     

i
    L OOKING BACK IN OLD AGE , Abraham Goldfaden came to recognize New York as Zion, the fulfillment of Jewish dreams. But it would not have seemed so back in Zhitomir. He was twenty-five when the United States finished its notorious Civil War. He had read about that conflict for nearly five years. Early on, the papers made much of the order from a General Ulysses S. Grant, who disliked Jewish peddlers catering to the Union soldiers: “The Jews, as a class violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department are hereby expelled from the department.” This dictumwas rescinded by Abe Lincoln, but look what happened: scarcely three years later the president was shot by a maniac, an actor. Who could tell what was in store for the Jews of America?
    Goldfaden was content to stay put. On the one hand, Russia was not such a wonderful country for its Jewish residents. On the other hand, things were beginning to loosen up. The Enlightenment had brought big changes. There were now a few progressive Jewish academies, places where you could read not only the Torah and the Talmud, but also Western novels and plays. Abraham's parents sent him to one, and were delighted with the results. Their son had turned out to be intelligent, original, and funny—Abie the Jester, they called him. When he graduated, the young man shocked the neighborhood: he took a leading role in an amateur production. This was not a normal thing for a Jewish boy, and even his liberal parents cautioned against it. He went ahead anyway.
    From the first rehearsal Abraham was aisle-struck. Performing exerted very little appeal—almost every member of the cast had more stage presence. But writing; that was different. He could see himself as the first Yiddish playwright. Maybe the first Yiddish composer. Early signs were encouraging: Abraham couldn't read a note, but he managed to pick out one-fingered tunes on a piano. Verse was written to accompany the melodies, and a student hired to write down the notes. (Another thirty years and a musically illiterate Jewish youth would do the same thing. Irving Berlin had genius, Goldfaden was to concede, but he was not the first of his kind.)
    Abraham's songs caught on; they were published and played in Jewish neighborhoods. Royalties, however, amounted to pennies. Clearly, he needed some other way to make a living. Well dressed, cleanshaven, except for a carefully trimmed military mustache, the young man went out to meet his destiny.
    First he fancied himself a
maggid,
a teacher, but the salary was too small. Next, he went to Odessa, where he tried his hand at retailing. Not enough ladies came to his millinery store and he closed it. What about medical school, then? Czar Alexander II had liberalized some of Russia's conditions, but he was not ready to allow Jews to be doctors. Off went Abraham to Vienna, where he entered an academy. The